Red Means Dead

“What do you want to be when you grow up?” my teacher asked the class. 

I didn’t raise my hand. Why would I? Surely a seven-year-old shouldn’t be expected to know what they want to do with the rest of their life. But my classmates–regardless of what was expected of them–knew exactly what they wanted to be. And they were more than happy to share. 

Shouts of “Doctor!” and “Zoo keeper!” crowded the room, piling on top of each other until my voice wouldn’t have been heard even if I wanted to speak. Only one other person was as silent as me. My best friend–Nova–was humming to herself as she scribbled away on a coloring sheet. She looked up at me and smiled. Her two front teeth were missing. “I don’t want to grow up.”

Mrs. Todd walked away from the mass of students gathered at the front of the room and over to where Nova and I were sitting at the back. She smiled at me. It was fake. “What do you want to be when you grow up, sweetie? A dentist? An actor?”

I glanced at Nova who had resumed coloring, her lopsided pigtails bouncing in rhythm with her humming. I looked back at Mrs. Todd, and something on my face made the smile fall off of hers. 

“I haven’t decided yet.”

I grabbed a bullet out of a box on the counter. They were 7.62x51 millimeter cartridges, and my sniper rifle held twelve rounds. 

I didn’t need that many.
I put twelve in anyway.

 With my gun loaded, I surveyed the room. I had already collected all of my things, each of them stowed away in my bag. I took out the file I had been given earlier that week containing the details on my marks. All of them lived in the same apartment building across the street from the hotel I was staying at.

My eyes ran over names, catching on one at the bottom of the list.

“Wanna come over to my house after school today?”

I returned the file to its designated spot in my pack and went over to the window, easing myself onto the fire escape. I ascended the stairs and peered over the edge of the roof once I reached the top. I was nine stories up. The fire escape zig-zagged across the building like man-made vines, while real ones hugged the metal railing. The brick building across the street was almost identical to the one I was on, except HOTEL didn’t flash in neon red letters from the side. Well, most of it did. The “o” and “t” had burnt out, leaving only H  EL behind. People speckled the ground, too swept up in the drowning current of life to turn their heads towards the sky. All the better for me. I wondered if it would hurt to hit the ground. Probably not for long, I reasoned. 

I shook my head. “Can’t. Mom wants me to come to Mrs. Todd’s conference with her.”

I took my rifle out of my bag and propped it up on its stand, the barrel aimed for a seventh story window of the apartment building.

She groaned, hanging her head. “You couldn’t come last week, either!”

I positioned myself so that I laid flat on my stomach on the roof, peering through the rifle’s scope. I flicked the safety off. A little red dot was revealed, glaring at me in warning.

I shrugged. “Just busy, I guess.”

A man on the third floor walked towards the window, his shoulders rising as he took a deep breath. A bullet pierced his leg before he could exhale. Another one broke the glass on the seventh floor. The sound of the gunshot echoed throughout the block.

Her eyes narrowed. “I guess.”

I sat up and switched the safety back on. Something dark soaked the carpet of the third floor as I imagined the shrieks of horror of any passerby unfortunate enough to see the man in pain. Someone pulled a phone out of their pocket, no doubt dialing 911. I started my watch’s timer. Eight minutes until the ambulance arrived. The evacuation of the building should start any second now. That gave me seven minutes to do my job. 

“Maybe next week?” I offered.

Ten more cartridges. Six targets. Four safety nets.

“I can dream.”

People pooled out of the building and onto the street. I pulled the bolt-action, emptying the used cartridges onto the roof. The barrel of my rifle was trained on the sea of people that had evacuated the apartments. I inhaled, trapping air in my lungs. Safety off.

Red means dead.

My finger squeezed the trigger.

Emily Maitland

Screaming.

Reload.

Victor Wellington

“Yeah.”

Delia Sinclair

Reload.

It was like a game. How many could I hit? I had a list this time. Some clients requested a number. Others just wanted people to die. It wasn’t my job to ask questions.

Edward Crane

Four more minutes.

Jack Portman

“‘Yeah’ what?”

One more mark.

“Dreaming. We can all dream.”

She didn’t have pigtails today. Pink and purple streaked her blond hair, along with splotches of paint from the canvas cradled in her arms. She had braids. They were still lopsided. Some things never change.

“What’s yours? Your dream, I mean.”

Reload. 

The cartridge seemed to fall in slow motion, clanging as it hit the concrete. 

Pull the trigger.

Nova Ryker

I was quiet. This wasn’t unusual. What was my dream? Some kids would wish for super powers, or to be rich, or to get what they wanted for Christmas. I knew I was more reasonable than most. More realistic. What was it my teacher had said? An old soul. I knew you had to work hard to get what you wanted, and when you got it, people would try to take it away. I had to find a way to keep it–to lock it up tight–before I even thought about what it was that I needed to keep.

My dream? To be in control.

“Dunno. I’d like to travel the world, or something.”

Safety on.

Cecilia Martz is a freshman in the Literary Arts program at Lafayette High School. They like writing horror pieces, competitive swimming, and playing the piano.